Will You Be Able To Afford A 5G Smartphone? OnePlus CEO Has Doubts

OnePlus has been one of those companies that went from being relatively unheard of to battling with the best of them in the smartphone industry. Their flagship OnePlus 6T has been reviewed as having a balanced set of features for the perfect price. Now the company is setting their sights on another ambitious goal: 5G.

As the caption says, 5G will be bigger than 4G, but it will also be more expensive (Image Credits: XDA Developers)

At the recently held Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit, the hot topic, of course, was 5G. Now the obstacle to 5G has been that there were no chips that could support the new network. This was overcome with the announcement of the Snapdragon 855. The latest flagship Qualcomm processor will make its way to almost all of 2019’s new flagship smartphones including OnePlus’s yet-to-be-named flagship device. But there’s a catch.

5G phones are not going to be cheap

According to Pete Lau – CEO of OnePlus, the next flagship of OnePlus that has 5G will cost around $200 to $300 more. Why? Because of the technology involved. For example, a particularly tough challenge for OnePlus would be to build a 5G smartphone for multiple cellular carries that work on different frequencies. According to Pete, the process would be considerably more difficult than switching from one 4G carrier to another 4G carrier.

Building a smartphone for multiple cellular carries that work on different frequencies for 5G is going to be particularly challenging (Image Credits: GSMA)

For now, OnePlus is only targeting the sub-6 spectrum for 5G used by EE which is a British mobile operator. As such, the flagship OnePlus 5G smartphone would launch first in Europe. “We’re confident we’ll be the first 5G phone in Europe,” Pete added.

What about existing 4G OnePlus devices?

According to Pete, because 5G smartphones are going to be a separate lineup of phones, support for existing 4G enabled smartphones will continue to coexist. This is because 5G won’t be available worldwide by next year.

The 5G device by OnePlus might also forgo some of its looks for functionality. “On the product level, it’s much more complex than 4G, so a significantly higher level of challenge, especially millimeter wave,” added Pete. The millimeter wave occupies the frequency spectrum from 30GNz to 300GHz.

The challenge here is to fit multiple antennas into the device. For example, Motorola had to place their 5G Moto Mod’s four antennas in various different orientations so that the user could hold the device from any number of angles without blocking the signal.

Regardless of the price of the phone, OnePlus is determined to launch a 5G phone for customers. According to Pete, it’s vital to get the device out as quickly as possible so that the engineers at OnePlus can fine tune all the details with 5G which would benefit future 5G smartphones.

Is 5G a viable option for Sri Lanka?

Well, that is quite a good question. For starters, Sri Lanka’s low population density means that there are certain areas with no signal coverage whatsoever for 4G access. 5G networks are also not likely to be cheap. With carriers in the US and Europe spending billions of dollars upgrading their network infrastructures, we can expect the same to happen in Sri Lanka.

Setting up 5G infrastructure in Sri Lanka is not going to be cheap at all. But is it worth it? (Image Credits: Construction Review Online)

Even if telecom operators did go and spend trillions of rupees on setting up 5G infrastructure, the time taken to regain that would be enormous. Nonetheless, operators like Dialog and Mobitel have already begun investing in the technology. Additionally, Dialog has announced that they’ll be initially focusing on providing 5G connections for homes before mobile connections.

Right now, 5G networks are expected to be operational towards the end of 2019. Yet, the question as to when exactly we’d see affordable 5G devices is an important one. Nonetheless, history has shown us that this is only a matter of time. So how do you feel about 5G in Sri Lanka? Let us know in the comments below.

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Venture Frontier Lanka is bringing experts in entrepreneurship from around the country to cities throughout Sri Lanka to train local entrepreneurs to think differently about the ventures they will start.

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Venture Frontier Lanka is bringing experts in entrepreneurship from around the country to cities throughout Sri Lanka to train local entrepreneurs to think differently about the ventures they will start. A caravan stop consists of different sessions about creating unique ideas for startup ventures and strategies for financing those ideas.

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The event is free of charge! REGISTRATION is mandatory for this event

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Early Bird till the 16th of Dec: 20% discount
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Join for a one day workshop where we unchain the collective wisdom and creativity

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Join for a one day workshop where we unchain the collective wisdom and creativity to help each other having a more productive digital nomad new year and build better cooperations for teamwork.

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Kitti is a digital nomad herself and a marketing consultant for innovative companies and early stage startups. She is a conversation ambassador for tedxdanubia, hosted meaningful conversations on ideas worth spreading. In the past years she worked in self organized teams, practiced facilitation, joined peer to peer networks, decentralized teams and cocreated a collective of freelancers. She is a cofounder of a sustainability startup that just secured its first round of investment. Worked as a mentor for many startups, and in the meantime she visited more than 15 countries.

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Karthik ( Associate Director, DTCC & Co-organiser of Hyperledger Chennai Meetup) will be here for the 2nd Hyperledger meetup.
He will share his experience with Hyperledger and Business application of Blockchain